


Tithonus

by RobinTrigue



Category: Car Boys (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Immortality, set after Episode 38, sort of, this is within the fiction of Car Boys so I'd like to believe it's not RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 23:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10977399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinTrigue/pseuds/RobinTrigue
Summary: Did you know, in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray is meant to be trapped there for ten thousand years or something? Anyway. The boys drove into the hole, and that’s cool and all, but mortality is starting to press upon them a bit. Which is pretty freaky unless you keep your mind off things.





	Tithonus

When Griffin found his first grey hair, they didn’t know what to think.

Well, Nick didn’t. Griffin seemed to have a lot to say on the matter.

“Niiiiiiiiick,” he wailed. “I’m getting _old,_ Nick, I used to be Forbes thirty under thirty media luminary Griffin McElroy and now I have a _grey hair,_ Nick, I’m elderly! Ancient! Obsolete! _I’m like the Crypt Keeper!”_

“That’s not right though,” Nick pointed out. Griffin swung his face over, half-covered by seatbelt, with sad puppy dog eyes.

“You wouldn’t understand, you have a head of those beautiful luscious locks. Give me your _youth_ , Nick, your beautiful bountiful hair.”

Nick shook his head, gesturing with his wrists still resting on the steering wheel at ten and two. “No, I mean that was a Freaky Friday reference, that’s a movie I _have_ seen, and Freaky Friday is definitely a bodyswap trope, not sudden ageing. You mean it’s like Big.”

That distracted Griffin enough to perk him up. “Unless! What if Big is _also_ a bodyswap, and somewhere out there is an adult man who got turned into a small boy in a comically large suit without having any idea why.”

“Played by Jim Carrey.”

“At _both_ ages!”

“Yes!”

They chuckled for a few minutes, then Griffin rolled down his window to throw the offending hair into a passing nebula. He tugged his seatbelt looser and leaned his torso out the window.

“Hey Ovo! How’s it goin’ back there, buddy? Still truckin’ along?”

Nick glanced up in the rearview. He could see an Ovo-shaped hole among the pixels of eternity; it hadn’t come back into visibility since its last blip... whenever that was. It probably still existed. They probably still did too. The Blob was still lurking steadily behind.

Still, though. The grey hair sure was a thing to think about.  

Trouble was, they couldn't think about anything too hard on case they ran out of things to think about and wound up soulless husks or whatever. Like if they thought every thought there was in the universe and then what the hell else are they meant to do? Eternity's a long time. Or what if it's not eternity, what if they eventually reach the singularity but they Mass Effect 3 Synthesis Ending into it and become part of everything, but the conversation they were having at the time was about the Tim Allen Santa Clause transformation scene? And then everything in the entire universe becomes the Tim Allen Santa Clause transformation scene and they have to live with that grim burden?

So, they don't think about the grey hair too hard. Keep things light.

Time didn't exist here, so it's hard to say how long they were going or really what they did. You don't really realise it when you're on the material human real world plane, but time's super important actually? Like if you did something on Tuesday, you know you did that thing then and not any other day. But when you're not sure when you went minigolfing or whatever, or for how long, it's hard to keep track of things like "before" and "after" too.

They argued for an indeterminate length of time about whether Elton John would get annoying after enough repetitions or whether it was humanly impossible to get irritated with Candle in the Wind. Griffin won that one.

They did a spacewalk out into the void a few times. Nick swore he touched the Blob, Griffin said that was bullshit. Griffin totally did touch the slipstream of eternity, they knew because the Pessima went super glitchy all of the sudden and Griffin got slightly godtrashed, but then they woke back up inside and the windshield wipers even worked again. (They had been broken for an indeterminate length of time.)

They tried to form some sort of rudimentary calendar based on Ball deflating and reforming. They sort of studied it in a casual, off-hand manner, but in the end had to give up. Everything was so wonky down here - up here? - They couldn't even tell whether Ball respawned regularly or at random. Whether it took minutes or years.

Mostly, they slept a lot.

Nick suggested, while the two of them were riffing on whether Pinocchio was one giant vore softcore, that their internal clocks were off because they no longer felt hunger. "I mean think about it, we didn't actually pack snacks for this ride into the unknown, did we?"

"There was that bag of Werther’s Originals in the glove compartment, but I _did_ throw them into the great beyond for being slightly warm and a little grody. And the package was already open."

"Yeah, that was a good call."

"Hey Nick, and do you know what else we haven't needed to do? Poooooop."

"That's right, we've had no need to do the doo-doo." Most of the time, Nick stayed in driving mode just out of habit, to feel like he was driving them into eternity and not that they'd been trapped in an inescapable time ring since they clipped through the ocean floor in the map. For this conversation, though, he was sitting upside down in the seat, feet on the headrest and head dunking down into the footwell. He had to peer up around the bottom of the steering wheel to see Griffin lounging in the backseat.

Griffin did look different to when they'd started. His hair was more speckled now, and his hairline had receded just a bit, though Nick vigorously denied that whenever Griffin brought it up. Griffin, to his credit, also denied whenever Nick asked if his eyelids looked "you know, like a sad hammock?" He could feel it though. The creaking in his joints if he tried to move for the first time after probably a while. The sensation that if he did eat a big meal, he'd probably need some Tums after it.

Griffin closed his eyes. Both of them were sort of getting baby crow's feet. What's smaller than a crow. A blackbird? A sparrow? Sparrow's feet. Captain Jack Sparrow's ugly smelly pirate's feet, all over their face.

"Do you ever think about how for as long as we're trapped in here, at least we won't have to see Pirates of the Caribbean five?"

Griffin opened one eye. "Or maybe we’re always watching it. Maybe we're sitting in the theatre right now, and this is the immersive four-dimensional experience that is Dead Men Tell No Tales."

"Woah. Mindfreak."

"Kablooey.”

“There's definitely way more than four dimensions in _this_ immersive experience though." It was hard to sit back upright gracefully; Nick wound up turning the blinkers and the parking brake on, but it obviously had no effect other than a brief irritating sound.

Griffin closed his eyes again. "Heh. Yeah. Like, a million dimensions, all packed into one waterproof Ibishu Pessima LX. I'm gonna take a nap."

"Tired?"

"Dude, I haven't been tired in lit-er-al-ly forever. I'm just gonna take a nap anyway."

So. It wasn't a total stasis. It was a sort of stasis, but they were aging.

Sometimes Nick wondered if Griffin still felt this was a sacred space. If Griffin still thought they had 'lost' by bringing the Blob in, so long ago.

After an indeterminate length of time, Nick was pretty sure he'd discovered a new colour. They called it florp, and Griffin swore he'd punch Anish Vantablack's face in if he got in their way at the patent office. Unless, of course, Nick had been Anish Vantablack this whole time and it was a sort of Tyler Durden situation.

The bits where they were sentient intangible beams of darkness coming out of the sides of the car weren’t so bad, to be honest.

Sometimes they talked about their families. They always interrupted themselves to point out that by their sacrifice, their loved ones would be safe. They were fine here. It was great, in eternity.

Best to keep stuff light.

"So Nick - no, listen Nick - I'm saying, what if we unspool the tailpipe like we did in gridmap that time, and I spacewalk as far as I can, then I jump, do a few sick flips, land on the Ovo, and boom! Flying buddies."

"Are you sure you're ready for the Ovo? She's a delicate bird to steer."

"Fine, I'll drive the Pessima and you can get in the Ovo and we'll have a little race! It'll be great!"

"Griffin?"

Griffin sighed, blowing out air like Nick always ruined his fun, which straight up was not true. But this time it maybe was.

"D'you ever think maybe we might die before we even get to the SunChips place?"

"Hmm. I dunno, I kinda thought we'd get super creepy old forever, like that David Tennant Doctor Who episode. "

"I thought we had a pact to never mention that episode."

"It was relevant to the conversation!" Griffin chewed his knuckle for a while, and Nick chewed his lip, and Griffin asked, "Why? You think you're gonna die?"

"I dunno, I wasn't planning on it!" Nick's arm had got a spot on it, one of those brown-orange spots that super old grandparents always had. He didn't think he was super old, minus being trapped in non-being for longer than numbers could possibly measure, but there must be some sort of intermediate stage between youngish and super old, right?

He'd heard them called liver spots, unless those were something else, so did it mean his liver was failing? They didn't have meds down here, but they didn't have alcohol either, so... What gives?

"It’s just," he began again, while Griffin fiddled with the side mirror, trying to get a glimpse of their inanimate travel companions. "It's just, what if we do die, or get old forever? Like, are we just trapped here in the Large Hadron Collider, spinning around and around looking like Gollum Tennant until the universe loses form? Or what if there is an end and Busto is there but oh no, we’re too dead to say hello and he plays around with our ragdoll corpses?”

"Wow, really bringing the dark and heavy today, huh?"

"It's what I do."

Griffin thought for a while.

“If we’re getting older, would that make us car mans?”

“Of course not, that sounds really fucking stupid to say.”

“You’re right, it’s a bad mouth-sound. So what’re you thinking?” Griffin asked it in the same voice he used for every hare-brained scheme, but there was just a little more spark to it this time. Like the old days, back when Griffin knew Nick had downloaded some new toys for them to wreck cars with. Back when they breathed oxygen instead of the Neon Genesis Evangelion-style breathable goo that flooded in each time the void’s pressure cracked the windshield. 

"Well, I was thinking, you know the bits of eternity that look like an actual place?"

"Tree heaven, yes."

"Well, what if we just ram on through? Chuck Yeager our way through the event horizon, and then see what happens next?"

Griffin frowned, still-round cheeks creased by deepening lines. "But wouldn't the Blob follow us and consume the entire world, ending civilization as we know it? I thought that was the whole point of this, Nick!

Nick did a one-shouldered shrug. "Can't break an omelette without making a few eggs."

"By which you mean the eggs in the movie Alien, which will soon burst through reality’s collective chest and annihilate everything."

"Pretty much, yeah."

Griffin grinned.

"Damn, I love that movie. Okay, let's try your thing and escape from our inevitable forever-deaths, but only if I get to drive the Ovo."

"I'm still not sure how that'll work out.”

"Oh, Nick, please, Nick, it's my birthday. Come on, Nick. It's my birthday."

Nick laughed, and revved the engine for no reason. Outside, the void flashed blue and orange. “Alright, but next time we launch ourselves into an unfathomable battle against oblivion and the devil itself, I get the Ovo."

**Author's Note:**

> RPF makes me DEEPLY uncomfortable, so I'm really hoping I've managed to write this as the personas that came through in Car Boys; any resemblance to persons living or dead, etc.


End file.
